


one step heavy

by nephropsis



Series: local foreigners [2]
Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Gen, Leo Parson, M/M, meet the parent(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-23
Updated: 2017-01-23
Packaged: 2018-09-19 12:52:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,497
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9441161
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nephropsis/pseuds/nephropsis
Summary: Leo meets Alexei when Kent breaks his nose, which is only the start of one of the more surprising few days of his life.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This follows on from kick on the starter, so if you haven't read that, this will make approximately zero sense

Leo’s learned a few things in his time: how to jumpstart a car, how to unstick a mitre saw, how to patch a roof and light a fire in the woods and how to raise a couple kids to adulthood.

The only thing he hasn’t quite managed is how to look at Kent as an adult, sometimes, because Kent will always be his son, and Leo will never learn how not to see him somehow suspended in time.

To him, Kent is all the ages he’s ever been all at once: eleven and three and twenty-one and eighteen.

When Kent comes home for Adam’s funeral, he’s eight again, to Leo, little pale face just as carefully blank as when Leo told him his mom had gone up to Buffalo and probably wasn’t coming back this time.

Boy, it hurts, and Leo has learned well that pain doesn’t diminish with age any more than love does, or at least this love, the kind he has in trust for his children. Even the one that’s gone.

Maybe he never learned how to show it the way Kent needed him to, and maybe he never learned how much Kent needed it, but Leo is trying to forgive himself things as well. It’s a Parson family trait, that.

-

Leo meets Alexei when Kent breaks his nose, which is only the start of one of the more surprising few days of his life.

Alexei is huge and Russian, and speaks in a rumbling bass that even Leo can tell is warm. He smiles easily and touches often. He’s gentle with Kent’s cat.

Leo only wishes Kent had told him about having a guest before Leo arrived, but Leo did surprise them both, so all he can say is that it’s pretty impressive how easy it is to be in Alexei’s company. It’s made easier by the fact that Leo catches the way he looks at Kent sometimes, like he’s wondering how he got so lucky. Leo knows the feeling, even if it’s for very different reasons. Leo wonders when Kent stopped needing him; Alexei looks like he needs Kent, which seems eminently logical to Leo. He needs Kent too.

He lets Alexei tell him all about Russian hockey, just to watch him talk, to gauge his manner, to see the light, careful way he strokes Kit’s back when she wanders into the kitchen for affection.

He likes him, Leo decides. He likes the way of him, which is something not easily explained in words.

-

Kent never tells him he’s gay. Leo just learns the way he learns everything else about Kent: sideways, from afar. It’s like Kent decided one day that the best way to avoid hurt and causing hurt was just to clam up, and Leo doesn’t know how to shake that out of him, has never learned how to try.

What he does know, though, is that Kent is gone on Alexei Mashkov, and that Alexei lives in Providence, which isn’t such a distance from Utica he couldn’t cover it in a few hours.

Leo goes to stay with them in Las Vegas over the summer, but the heat is oppressive and the house is filled with longing, heated glances, and Leo leaves them to it.

When he gets back to Utica he thinks about it for a while, then gets in touch with Alexei. _Come upstate for a weekend some time_ he offers. _Get out of the city._

It’s a longshot. Leo would never have gone to stay with Gretchen’s parents by himself; they didn’t approve of him— too irreverent, not devout, not good enough for their only daughter— so there was that, but even if they had, he’s not sure how he would have bonded with her father, from good solid middle-class stock, a doctor, someone with more money in his back pocket than Leo made in a week. But maybe he would have, if he’d felt the offer to be genuine.

 _Yes okay_ Alexei replies. _I bring anything?_

Leo stocks up on red meat and beer and finds himself pleased. Alexei’s bolder than he is. he likes that, too.

-

Alexei arrives with little fanfare in a sleek car, having asked for Leo’s address for the GPS with unfailing politeness.

It’s already the hockey season, and Kent has already called him to ask if he’s going to be nice to Alexei, why he’s inviting Alexei upstate, why he’s doing it on a weekend he knows Kent has a game, whether he thinks its funny.

Leo can infer most of that from Kent’s quiet, brutally stubborn insistence. “I’m still going to date him if you don’t like him.”

“I know,” he’d said. “I invited him because I do like him. I want to get to know him.”

Kent had huffed and changed the subject.

“Can only stay one night,” Alexei says, tossing his car keys from hand to hand. “But is such nice drive, thank you for asking me.”

“Want a beer?” Leo asks him.

“Yes please,” Alexei says, formal and correct. “I’m bring vodka, also. Don’t know if you like, but Kent is hating wine, so I’m think vodka is safer.” He grins, teeth big, white, slightly gapped but none missing.

“Kent will never get over the kosher wine incident from his Bar Mitzvah,” Leo says, shaking his head at the memory. “It got everywhere. He was so sick.”

“Oh?” Inside, Alexei seems even bigger, but he doesn’t bump into anything, doesn’t smack his head on the low beams of the old house. He’s oddly graceful for a man his size. Leo wonders what he does for fun, if it’s not hockey.

“Yeah,” Leo says, happy to tell the story. “Want to see a photo?”

-

  
Alexei laughs so hard beer almost comes out his nose, his whole body curling down with it. he touches a finger to Kent’s miniature, outraged, purple-stained face and leaves it there for a while, a smile spreading easy and open across his face. “He had big ears,” he says, tracing them.

Leo swallows hard. “He grew into them.”

“Yes.” Alexei flicks a page in the album and pauses, fingers hovering. “This is Adam?”

“Yes.”

“Tell me about him too?”

Leo looks at him, and Alexei sits back, sinking into the sagging couch in the living room Leo hasn’t replaced despite Kent’s insistence that he’ll buy him a new one. It’s not about the couch. It’s not even about nostalgia, entirely, though that plays a part. It’s a little like how Kent will always be his kid, even when Kent is too old to be young. It’s a place where they used to sit together, and they might not have been a happy family all the time, but damn it, sometimes they were. Leo needs the reminders, sometimes. “Oh, Adam was— well, he was never a troublemaker, but I was as surprised as anyone when he joined the marines.”

“My father was in army once,” Alexei offers, without elaborating. “Most were, at home.”

“It’s nice to have the pictures,” Leo says, before turning the page.

-

On Sunday morning he takes him fishing. Alexei is terrible at it. He drops six worms out of ten, and doesn’t keep any of the fish he catches, slipping them back into the water with studied care.

“I’m not needing them,” he says, when Leo sends him a questioning look. “Can carry on being fish.”

-

Leo sends him off with a photo album. Alexei accepts it with a wide smile, turning it over in delight. “Kent will be mad.”

“No he won’t,” Leo says conspiratorially. “They’re the only photos of him dressed up as a cat for Halloween.”

Alexei barks a laugh and tucks the album away out of sight. “Don’t worry. I’m keep them safe.”

“I figure you will,” Leo tells him, before he sends him on his way. “Thanks for coming.”

“Thanks for asking,” Alexei says, holding out a hand.

Leo takes it. “Come back anytime.”

He’s surprised when Alexei reels him in for a hug instead of a handshake, but he goes with it.

-

When he’s gone, Leo calls Kent, but gets his voicemail. “He’s a good one,” he says to the recorder. “I—“

Absurdly, he runs out of words, so he presses the hash key to rerecord. He just tells Kent they had a good time, and to stop panicking. Leo follows him on Instagram now, and has learned that when the cat is in costumes, Kent is trying desperately to distract himself. “You can stop putting bow ties on Kit.”

Kent groans audibly when Leo tells him Alexei has the Halloween pictures, but that’s four days later, and the deed is done. Leo has plenty of regrets, but this isn’t one of them.

He wishes it was easier to tell Kent that he’s glad of him, but the habits of a lifetime are very hard to break, so he’ll just have to show him. At least now he’s certain he’s not the only one.

-


End file.
